277 
assessment, on the average, fall considerably below the actual number, 
this comparison indicates a falling off within three years of not less than 
one-third in the aggregate numbers of cattle in the portions of the State 
coyered by the reports. It also indicates that there are now in the coun- 
ties reported only three-fifths as many milch-cows as there were in 1870; 
but it is quite probable that some of the reporters for the census did not 
distinguish between “ milch-cows” and “ cows that give milk.” For in- 
stance, Hunt County reported a number of milch-cows equal to one- 
fourth the total number of cattle, which is just the proportion of 
‘““mother-cows” usually estimated as the average in herds and aggre- 
gates. The decrease in the number of working-oxen is sufficiently ac- 
counted for by concurrent statements of our correspondents that they 
are being gradually superseded by horses and mules. 
FACTS FROM VARIOUS SOURCES. 
A SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT IN TEACHING AGRICULTURE.—Soon 
after the close of the war there was formed in Baltimore an association of 
Friends for the purpose of advising and assisting impoverished Friends 
in the Southern States. The immediate object was to afford physical 
relief; but as the continuance of physical want can only be prevented 
by remoying its causes, the association wisely connected with their 
beneficence a system of mental, moral, and religious education. 
Their principal field of operations was in the rural districts of 
western North Carolina. In the outset they were met by a difficulty 
which they foresaw, unless removed, must prove an insuperable obstacle 
in the way of effectually helping a community, where want of bread and 
want of intellectual and moral culture extensively prevailed, to rise to 
a condition in which they could support and educate themselves inde- 
pendently of foreign aid. Homes provided with facilities for secular 
and religious education imply adequate means. With a rural popula- 
tion these can be obtained from no other source than the soil. But in 
the section where their advice and aid were most needed, the soil had 
become so impoverished by thriftless cultivation, the herds and flocks 
were of such inferior, unremunerative varieties, and the prevalent 
modes of husbandry so necessitated, not only scant returns, but a still 
further exhaustion of the soil, that, without a change for the better, 
continued poverty and dependence were inevitable. Besides, it being 
the prevalent notion that the meager products of the land were owing, 
not to a defective style of farming, but to a worn-out soil, the dispo- 
sition of the more capable and enterprising, especially among the 
young, to emigrate seemed to be restrained only by the want of 
means to get away. With a view to remedy this discouraging state 
of things, the association, in 1867, purchased a farm of 200 acres, located 
at Springfield, on the dividing line between Randolph and Guilford 
Counties. On this they placed, as their superintendent, an expe- 
rienced and enterprising farmer, and furnished him the means of teach- 
ing improved agriculture by exemplifying its processes and by bringing 
within the reach of the farmers in the region round about the necessary 
facilities for entering upon a career of improvement themselves. He was 
expected to conduct his farming operations in such a way as to show to 
the farmers in the neighborhood what modern improved agricultural 
machines and implements are and how they are worked; what advan- 
